1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to storage area networks. More specifically, the present invention provides mechanisms for efficient and effectively configuring storage resources in a fibre channel fabric.
2. Description of Related Art
In many storage area networks, virtualization is provided at a host or at an endpoint. For endpoint virtualization, a storage device may have multiple disks that include redundancy, striping and mirroring features. A host writes data to a disk array and the disk array is responsible for managing redundancy features in a manner transparent to the host. In another example, hosts may be responsible for implementing virtualization. Instead of having an end device perform the redundancy operations, a host can elect to mirror and stripe data across a variety of storage devices in a storage area network.
With the emergence of intelligent storage area networks, applications such as volume management, virtualization, and remote replication are being moved to the network. In some examples, fibre channel switches in a storage area network perform functions associated with these applications in a manner transparent to the hosts and end devices. However, mechanisms for efficiently and effectively configuring and allocating storage resources are limited in network based virtualization systems.
It is therefore desirable to provide methods and apparatus for improving the allocation and configuration of storage resources in a network using virtualization.